It was almost a year ago when I was digging through various search strings running in an uncountable number of tabs within my browser that it struck me how powerful the browser could really be for recruiters willing to take advantage of it. Of course at that point I was only thinking about bookmarks and Firefoxplugins, so of course the little monster that resides inside my head just pointed to toolbars and add-ons and huffed… and said he’d be back.
Since then I’ve been trying to figure out what the little guy meant. In doing so I’ve tried to get my hands on every browser add-on I could find related to my work whenever I had a spare moment to play. The result has been my learning a few neat tricks, fun hacks, and some terrific nuggets of wisdom along the way – but none of it was really what he was getting at. Truth be told, he gets more noisy and restless over time until I finally break the code.
So I think I’ve managed to decipher what his grunting and scratching and almost Tasmanian sounds were pushing me towards, and I think I’m ready to share what the fuss was all about. His idea was that of a completely mobile and cloud based box set of recruiting tools and practices – easily transferred/passed/shared between collaborative teams.
Damn, he’s good.
This will take more than a single post to get through. So we’ll start where a recent article of mine (Your Internet Recruiting Dashboard) left off… iGoogle and Custom Search Engines.
Fire up your iGoogle page and you’re greeted with some basic items that we’re all used to seeing. Most are using it to house modules dedicated to their Inbox, some RSS feeds and maybe local weather information. In discussions with other recruiters I was a little surprised to find that many aren’t taking full advantage of the customization that can occur, if using it at all.
On the left hand side of the iGoogle page you’re presented with tabs. And by clicking on a small drop down arrow located in your active tab you’re presented with the option to add a new tab. Go ahead… give it a shot.
Once you’ve added the new tab you’ll be asked to give it a name. So in the interest of staying on the same page let’s go ahead and name it, “RecruiterGuy Rocks”…
No? Okay… just name it “Recruiter”
You guessed it – we’re going to make a tab customized around your recruiting and sourcing needs. Heck, we might just get crazy and make a few of them!
You’ll be presented with an option to search for items to add to your new tab. Go ahead and dig in. I’d recommend starting with keywords like “resume” for starters. Grab some of the gadgets available and add them to your RecruiterGuy Rocks tab.
When you’ve added a half a dozen gadgets go ahead and go back to iGoogle.com and start to play with them. Try various searches using standard strings and see what type of results you get. Many of the customized search boxes are made by people like you and me so the results will vary – I’d recommend taking a good look at the rankings or number of users to help you decide beforehand which might be more effective than others.
Dump the ones that don’t work for you and organize those that do. You can move the widgets around by clicking and dragging them in whatever order you’d prefer. I personally like to sort mine based on purpose and in columns but it’s completely up to you. You’ll even find some settings that allow you to change the number of columns on your tab – hey, knock yourself out.
What you’ve just done is created a customized search panel – or dashboard. This dashboard of search engines is catered to your needs. Some of the widgets you likely found were based on basic Boolean searches in Google for (intitle:resume) or detailed LinkedIn profile searches or any number of resume databases publicly listed.
Interesting start, yes?
Next up… creating your own widgets around your own search criteria and needs.
